I'm pretty sure they have you take the survey to see if you have a good enough computer to run the game, and it puts you higher on the list if you have Dota experience. You're pretty much put on a raffle when you turn in the survey to be put into the beta, much like when Blizzard does a beta.

I mostly just lurk and occasionally post, but when I post I usually just stick to the general chat side of the forums. As of now the conversations about the show are things that are just brought back up again and were already talked about before i.e. who is best pony.

I'll be honest here, I want the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 to go jump in a lake. It's holding back technology and developer's creativity now, and we need new hardware. All these games being ported to PC from console look terrible, Darksiders 2 could have been gorgeous looking, but we're stuck with terrible looking textures.

Like you said he face is a bit too round, which is correct. Also the insider of the eye is black so you gotta shade that in. I would recommend drawing by shapes, start with a circle and build the face around it. Overall it's ok though, you just need to keep practing and you'll get it.

I lol'd when the Pudge pulled you back when you were chasing Witch Doctor, pretty cool first blood dude. Also on the topic of the art, I've been practicing drawing people so it goes over into drawing Dota characters y'know.
*edit: fwi I still suck at drawing dynamic poses so the Naix drawing isn't the best
Lifestealer

The portrait of Omniknight was maybe 30 minutes, but the more complete drawing of Omniknight took a bit longer. I had a different idea in mind for the full body drawing, but I need to work on drawing people more before I try something more dynamic.

Some Dota 2 artwork that I've done not too long ago, Omniknight is pretty fun to draw.
Face:
Most of the body
I have no idea how long the beta will last, and I'm not sure how often Valve sends out beta codes.